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How to tell if it is robbing

How do i tell if my hive is being robbed. I can sit within a foot of the entrance without protection and watch the entrance, but I have no idea what I am mlooking at. What does a robbing bee look like vs. one who is just doing his chores?

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Originally Posted by ramdino

How do i tell if my hive is being robbed. I can sit within a foot of the entrance without protection and watch the entrance, but I have no idea what I am mlooking at. What does a robbing bee look like vs. one who is just doing his chores?

The flight in and out is less direct. More circular and wavy. One of those bee things that is hard to describe. Watch for wax crumbles on floorboard entrance.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Sitting a foot by the entrance is rather dangerous. Someone here got stung on the eyelid, face, neck, etc. I even stare into the hive within 6 inches to see what's at the bottom of the hive. But only after they settle down just before the sunset. Still dangerous though. Sometimes I am thinking to wear a goggle. Accident might happen when we are least expected. Now I sat 4 feet away on a high chair out of the busy bee route to watch them. A bit safer this way.
When you watch them you will see the normal flight path where they come and go without any restriction. This is the normal operation of the bees. The guard bee meets these foragers at the entrance kinda like bumping head and ease off into the hive. This is a very natural state they do this. Come and go at will! Just the low pitch smooth flying by buzzing before the landing. Once they landed the buzzing noise is no more. You will hear this noise when close to the hive entrance.
But during a robbing there will be many entropy either at the outside entrance or inside the hive. You will see they are biting each others. Tugging and dragging each others around and to the outside of the hive. If you ever see a live bee carrying the dead bee out off the entrance then they will roll around on the ground trying to free each other off. Also if you ever seen the mad bees with their wings up and buzzing loud noise, a robbing will increase this noise and buzzing level 10 times. It is like the whole hive is on guard maybe of the different smell of the foreign bees. So in a robbing situation fighting and rolling will increase while they tangled up with each others still alive. The noise level is fast and higher in buzzing sound like a stressful noise. Trying to kill each others is more like it. The next time you see a worker bee accident fly into a hive that is not hers, she will quickly buzzed out to avoid the guard beesr. Zip in and out really fast! Almost like lightning fast. When you see the many restless bees outside the hive then something is wrong here. I am trying to upload a vid of a queenless hive now. The restlessness increased 15 times at the entrance versus a normal calm hive with a queen in there. A robbing will increase this level to 25+ times more outside.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

I've also found that the noise in front of the hive may be an indicator of robbing. It may be an individual thing but, to me a hive being robbed sounds more intense (ticked-off) than the noises that I associate with a colony that is just really busy.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Watch to see if anyone is bringing in pollen. A hive being robbed is dead or about to be and is't having pollen delivered. Look for bits of wax on the landing board but the dead give away is the light sticky brown paste left on the entrance. It from the robber bees tracking honey on their feet.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

I got a lot of pollen coming in, about 25% of the bees entering have pollen loads. But there is a lot of bees that seem to fly around the entrance without landing. Like it's not a direct fly in. There is usually 10-20 kinda darting about in front of the hive. I have not noticed the combat ya'll have mentioned. I will take better notice if it warms today. I have an entrance feeder and there are always 3-5 around the entrance feeder trying to stick their tongue between the crack where the jar lid joins the feeder body.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Sounds like you're looking at orientation flights, especially if +/-25% of the bee's have pollen loads. Orientation flights are where young bees exit the hive and fly back and forth around the hive as they set their version of GPS. If they come out in mass it can look like robbing but there's no fighting at the entrance.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

I have a really hard time distinguishing between orientation flights and robbing. The main difference I see is that once robbing gets going it goes as long as it is daylight, where orientation flgihts tend to occur only in the early to mid-afternoon and orientation activity last for only an hour or two. Also each hive seems to have its own preferred time of day for orientation flights, and its entrance activity is relatively quiet during other times of the day.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

My brother's deadout got robbed out last spring, and this is what I observed vs orientation flights:

Bees flying around the hive investigating crack, under the telescoping cover, and behind the hive. Orienting bees are all in front.

Bees landing on the sides or front of the hive and walking around to find the entrance. Bees know where the entrance to their own hive is and fly straight in when "loaded" with pollen or nectar, sometimes landing short but going right in. Bees searching for the entrance are not from that hive.

Bees having trouble getting airborne when leaving, sometimes sliding down the landing board. During orientation, it's normal for bees to climb up the front of the hive to leave since there are so many bees flying directly into the entrance. This is the opposite of robbing, when bees fly slowly away and quickly in, landing on the front and walking down into the entrance.

A live hive will fight the robbers, but if they get overwhelmed you may not see much fighting, just heavy bees leaving. Probably a goner by that time.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

the robbing bees clump together around entrances and any cracks and have this crazed movement to them. Sometime you'll see them clustered in a frenzy around a tiny crack that isn't an actual entrance looking for a way into the hive. If you block the entrance of a hive that is getting robbed and open it later, it's like a jail break mass exodus when the entrance is reopened.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Sorry to revive an old thread, but this seems like an important one. I recently started 3 bee colonies two days ago, and have labeled them with numbers and meticulously kept records of things I have noticed that seem important. I have Hive I,Hive II, and Hive III(I like Roman numerals). As we had to pick up our bee packages 2 days late due to incompetency of one of the workers, noticeable amounts of dead bees were dead on the bottom. So I recorded which strongest colonies went into which hives. Hive I had the strongest colony, Hive II had the weaker colony, and Hive III was a little weaker than Hive II.
Now to the point, I am seeing large clusters of bees around the entrance of Hive I, and bees going between hive 1 and II, and Hive III and II. I am feeding them with feeder bottles on top of the inner cover, covered by another super with a lid. I figured this would well hinder robbing. Also, no bees are carrying pollen or noticeably foraging at all. I figure this is normal since these hives are new and their queens aren't released yet? Anyways, I plugged the man made hole in the single brood box of Hive II with duct tape, as it "seems" to be the weakest colony. Am I too late? Also, the entrance reducers i got were about 3/4" too short, so there are 3 entrances on the other hives than Hive II

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Is it robbing? --- six week old hive--been doing great, everything seeming to be happy and satisfied. Been feeding about a quart of syrup about every 3-4 days. This week with no warning at all the syrup went to a quart a day. I do have a quite a bunch ofnew baby girls, but they didn't just happen in one day as did the syrup increase. Have looked for signs of leakage in the feeding tray, etc., but nothing. There have been large numbers of bees all over the entrance and many flying around the front of the hive when the food got low. Haven't seen any of what I would think would be fighting, but they seem to calm when I put in a fresh jar of syrup. Does this sound like robbing or of anything else I might look at?
Thanks Guys. Have a great weekend.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Chico, I am right up the road from you and the nectar sources are drying up fast this year. It would not be unlikely for them to partake of that amount per day. Last year I had new nucs/hives and they were taking a quart a day or more about this time. Keep feeding and build the comb out. When they are being robbed, it is chaos and fighting in the front.

Re: How to tell if it is robbing

Thanks, Possum. That makes me feel a helluva lot better. When I pick up the feeder jar, the lid is covered ass deep in bees feeding and I just hadn't seen them feed like this. You can literally sit and watch a bubble come up about every 30 seconds and you can see tongues in every pinhole. Thinkin it might be robbing, I put the entrance reducer back in this morning to see if I saw any heavier defense indications and to help defense a little easier, but I still didn't see any signs of a war goin in----actually only seemed to piss them off. I'll go take it back out now.
If you don't mind, Man--since you're up the road I wonder if I could trouble you with some questions from time to time. I really do enjoy my bees and am learning form them daily, so in turn, I'd like to do the best for them that I can.
Thanks again, Man. Have a great day and enjoy this pretty weather.